Gibson: Christians tolerate those following the "wrong religion."

[edbermac]

Fox's Gibson: Christians tolerate those who are "following the wrong religion ... as long as they're civil and behave"

Throughout his promotion of his book, The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought (Sentinel, October 2005), Fox News host John Gibson has remained vague about exactly who he believes is orchestrating the alleged attack on Christmas beyond the "liberals" in the book's title. For instance, as Media Matters for America documented, during an appearance on the October 20 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Gibson limited his criticism of those supposedly undermining Christmas to "liberals." O'Reilly, on the other hand, was compelled to narrow the focus of their offensive: "I think you made a mistake by saying it's a liberal plot," O'Reilly told Gibson. "It's the far left. It's the loony left, the Kool-Aid secular progressive ACLU America-haters. That's who's doing this."

Gibson was more pointed, however, during a November 17 appearance on Janet Parshall's nationally syndicated radio program. During a discussion about the alleged "war on Christmas," Gibson suggested that people "following the wrong religion" were not reciprocating the tolerance afforded to them by "the majority religion -- Christianity." He also said that as long as adherents of minority religions "are civil and they behave," Christians will tolerate them "without causing any trouble" -- a view endorsed by Parshall.

GIBSON: No, no, no. If you figure that -- listen, we get a little theological here, and it's probably a bit over my head, but I would think if somebody is going to be -- have to answer for following the wrong religion, they're not going to have to answer to me. We know who they're going to have to answer to.

PARSHALL: Right.

GIBSON: And that's fine. Let 'em. But in the meantime, as long as they're civil and behave, we tolerate the presence of other religions around us without causing trouble, and I think most Americans are fine with that tradition.

PARSHALL: I agree.

GIBSON: In other words, they'd like it in return.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200512010018

You hear that, all you Non-Christians out there? The time has come for you to ATONE!

:sarcasm:

[rockymountaindem]

1. Tsk tsk... what would the founding fathers say?

Oh wait, I know!

"The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens."
-President George Washington (1790)

[Warpy]

2. Ha! like we haven't been shut out of power for the last

37 years! My word, who knew that people shut out of power, shut out of the mass media, and pretty much shut out of everything for 37 years were so powerful?

We should be running the world.

:sarcasm:

[catmother]

3. they're all so sure that their religion is the right religion. so i

guess if us "godless liberals" behave ourselves it's okay. what if we don't behave?????

[joefree1]

4. Ya mean after the dark ages and the burning times we got more?

Then you steal our Yule Winter Solstice celebration and we gotta atone? I finally get why you worship a symbol of torture.


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PaganWarrior/

[jbnow]

9. That is a good point

there were many pagan or "wrong religion" holidays around Christmas and they did steal the time to lure worshipers over.
Jesus certainly was not born at that time. I am in favor of celebrating nearer when the man was really born, likely September. The weather is better, no icy roads to grandmothers house, no snow bound planes.

What is the "wrong religion"? Could it be the religion of those who are hypocrites? Those who declare someone their Lord and then acts the opposite of every way he preached?

[Al-CIAda]

14. Many believe it was spring, actually...March/April

...but that runs into another 'pagan' holiday that Christianity stole, Easter. You know, rabbits, eggs, and all that fertility and crop planting celebraton stuff.

Most Biblical scholars aknowledge these facts openly, yet the 'fundies' and hucksters persist in their bizarre made-up world of flawed mythologies...and INSIST you buy into the insanity.

This is so stupid. Perhaps the pagans need to defend the 'attack' on such occasions by the Christians.

[Arkana]

5. Wow, talk about your backhanded apologies.

[rman]

6. So do most muslims

In fact many religions are tolerant of other (by defintion "wrong") religions.
Also most atheists are tolerant of any religion - as long the followers of those religions behave.

[KamaAina]

7. That darn Gibson! Is he bashing Zoroastrians again?

Or could it be the Baha'is this time? :sarcasm:

Between the lines, it says either "Muslims" or "Jews", and most likely both. What a disgusting sack of shite.

[Zynx]

8. He's so extreme you would think he is making fun of the right wingers.

He says all the stereotypical right-wing trash about "America haters" and "the wrong religion".

[Lindacooks]

10. What fundie 'Christ'ians want is for their hatred to be accepted.

They want to be able to hate and judge and point fingers without being called on it. That's what Gibson is whining about.

Sorry, Johnny, hate isn't a family value, it isn't a religion, and people who hate aren't a protected minority.

[Pachamama]

11. Ah, a story as old as time: "My Religion is better than yours, mine is the

"right" one, my religions followers will go to Heaven and everyone else to hell, my religion is the chosen one, blah, blah, blah...

Think of how many wars, battles, crusades, and people have been killed and died for these bullshit arguments....

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

12. The guy actually wrote a BOOK about this? So far, as far as I can tell,

this "attack on Xmas" phenomenon ONLY exists as a product of FOX, including Hannity and O'Reilly.

[bluedawg12]

13. Tolerance for others? Such magnanimous forebearance

from a cipher.

He should define: behave, civil, and wrong religion.

Tolerating the wrong religion is intolerant.

Accusing someone of being wrong is hardly tolerance- even by warped Faux standards.

what a sick world we live in, thanks to radicalrightwinglunatics.

[confludemocrat]

15. This guy is just an Andy Kaufman of Fox doing a performance artist act

that he hopes will make him rich. He has reinvented himself because he's trying to finally make it and transcend his innate mediocrity before he dies in forgotten oblivion as a nobody former TV "personality". He's still the colorless bore he began as at KCRA TV in Sacramento California in the seventies. At least most of the rest of us who are regular people will have some of our integrity intact when we pass from this world.

[davidinalameda]

16. tolerate?

I've got something he can tolerate

fuck stick

why does this man hate our freedoms?

[Nikki Stone 1]

17. Religious tolerance is a constitutional right, not a favor bestowed by the

"majority religion". Gibson acts like the Christians are doing such a favor to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and anyone else by tolerating them in the Christian USA. Provided the Jews, Muslims and Buddhists "don't make any trouble."

[Cassandra]

18. "We let them live here."

Something Ronald Reagan said about non-Christians during a speech. Sorry I don't remember the occasion of the speech. I only remember that line; I was so disgusted.

[CatholicEdHead]

19. "without causing any trouble" says it all

Just sit down in the back of the bus and shut up is what this is. Just like during the Civil Rights era (which we are sadly regressing from).

Same language with a modified application.

[Ian David]

20. I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
--Thomas Jefferson

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.
-Thomas Jefferson

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
-Thomas Jefferson

The Bible is not my book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.
-Abraham Lincoln

[long_green]

21. he does manage to tell the truth

"...listen, we get a little theological here, and it's probably a bit over my head..."

gotta hand it to him, he knows when he's licked. He'll just keep writing books about invisible men and women dynamiting nativity scenes.
Now that I read over it again, I see he tells another truth (he must be running a temperature). He refers to the religious tolerance guaranteed by the First Amendment as a "tradition." That is all that the Constitution is to people like him. A cute little tradition.